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Title: The Crooked Cross
Author: Arthur Stuart Duncan-Jones (1879-1955)
Date of first publication: 1940
Place and date of edition used as base for this ebook:
London: Macmillan, 1940 (First Edition)
[Macmillan War Pamphlets 4]
Date first posted: 23 February 2008
Date last updated: October 6, 2014
Faded Page ebook#20141022
THE CROOKED CROSS
_By_
DR. A. S. DUNCAN-JONES
_Dean of Chichester_
LONDON
MACMILLAN & CO. LTD
1940
THE CROOKED CROSS
For those who had eyes to see, the Nazi attack on the
Churches was the earliest and also the clearest exposure of
the true character of National Socialism. Though the
treatment of the Jews was more shocking by reason of its
brutality and sadism, this cruel campaign revealed less of
the inner nature of the forces that had climbed to power at
the beginning of 1933. Anti-Semitism fitted in naturally
with the racial doctrine which was the chief instrument of
Hitler and his associates for reviving and solidifying the
national ambitions.
Anti-Semitism had a negative as well as a positive advantage
from Hitler's point of view. The very violence of the
outbreak would lull to sleep suspicions aroused by other
aspects of the Nazi spirit. Other nations might well feel
that, while the Nazi energies were so fully occupied with
the congenial task of persecuting these helpless people, it
would leave them little time or inclination to become a
threat to peoples dwelling outside the borders of Germany,
and this consoling, if cynical, conclusion would be
confirmed by the belief that those who were racially akin to
the Germans had nothing to fear from the national
resurgence. Events proved that these calculations were not
without foundation. The persecution of the Jews, though it
deeply shocked men and women of all countries who think
first in terms of ordinary humanity, had very little effect
on diplomats or statesmen.
The attack on the Churches was in a different category. For
this no racial excuses could be advanced. The strongly
national tinge running through all Church life in Germany
made such an outbreak astonishing. That the Churches should
find themselves in opposition on various points to a
free-thinking liberal Government, like the Weimar regime,
was intelligible; though, in fact, the relations between the
Churches and the Republic were far more friendly than might
have been expected. But that a movement which claimed to
restore the national spirit, to introduce a lost social
order, and to be the bitter foe of "Godless Communism",
should find itself in opposition to the Churches was indeed
a matter for surprise. The answer from Berlin was quickly
forthcoming. What appeared to be persecution was not such
really. The parsons were interfering in politics. The
actions of the State were not of a persecuting character.
They were merely defensive. If the parson would stick to his
job he would not get into trouble. This explanation was
easily accepted by many in other countries, who disliked the
notion that religion had anything to do with public affairs.
There were indeed some who accepted this piece of propaganda
until war broke out.
Once again politicians were put off the scent by the
reflection that a theological and ecclesiastical conflict
must be a purely internal matter, with which they had
nothing to do. Though in one sense this judgment was
entirely correct--obviously no intervention was called
for--yet this unexpected phenomenon had much to teach the
statesmen and diplomats, if they had given their attention
to it in time. The truth was that the attack on the Church
conveyed a political lesson of the first importance. It
revealed the Nazi party as a gang determined to impose their
power on their fellow-Germans without scruple, and thereby
exploded the supposed racial basis of the Nazi philosophy.
The attack also brought to the front the implications of the
_Weltanschauung_--the word repeated _ad nauseam_ by the
fervent young Nazis. The _Weltanschauung_ was a view of
life and of the world, demanding the loyalty given to a
religion, and endowed with a missionary enthusiasm that
recognised no frontiers.
=The False Messiah=
The real power of the National Socialist Movement in Germany
can only be understood when it is recognised as a form of
religion. Every substantial political movement has about it
an element of faith. But ordinary political movements in
Western Europe do not claim the complete devotion, body and
mind, of their adherents. This is precisely what National
Socialism does. Nazism and Communism have this fundamental
totalitarian characteristic in common. They can brook no
rival loyalty. As Karl Barth said in his lecture to the
Swiss Evangelical Church in December, 1938, "National
Socialism is a religious institution of salvation.... It is
impossible to understand National Socialism, unless we see
it in fact as a new Islam, its myth as a new Allah, and
Hitler as this new Allah's Prophet." The comparison is apt.
Dr. Ley, the leader of the Labour Front, has said, "I
believe on this earth in Adolf Hitler alone. I believe in
one Lord God who made me and guides me, and I believe that
this Lord God has sent Adolf Hitler to us." There is,
however, a profound difference between Mohammedanism and
Hitlerism. Mohammed was a prophet who believed in a
transcendent God, before whom he bowed and by whom he would
be judged. Hitler's God is immanent in himself; he is a
demi-God, not a prophet. The Divine is for him merely the
power which enables him to do more efficiently what he
wants.
The secret of the success of National Socialism lies
precisely in the religious, mystical element, symbolised in
the Swastika. The terrible _débâcle_ that immediately
followed the last war left masses of the German people eager
for redemption, for a reversal of their fate, and
passionately longing, for some star to which to hitch their
waggon. Reason does not play the part in the German
mentality that it does in the French or English. The great
German philosophers have been half mystics. The young German
especially was looking for something romantic and mysterious
that would hold out the prospect of a speedy millennium
which would save him from his fear of standing alone by
planting him in a national community, and would give him the
assurance that defeat would be reversed. Into this Messianic
mood the dervish-like ragings of Hitler, with their call for
blind obedience, fitted admirably. The Germans do everything
to excess. There is, as Coleridge (who admired them), said,
a nimiety, a too-muchness about the Germans. The German
people had fallen into an unreasonable excess of depression.
Hitler raised them into an equally unreasonable excess of
exaltation and defiance. Hitler had felt the pulse of the
common man. He knew what he was doing. His instinct was
uncannily correct.
Hitler's aims are fundamentally political. They are the
possession of power for the German people, and for himself,
as the controller and representative of the German people.
At the moment he has achieved considerable success. His
power over the German people is complete, and he has
extended his control over a number of other peoples. This
success has been due to his clear perception that physical
force by itself will not achieve power. It must go hand in
hand with kindling ideas. The sword needs propaganda as its
ally. "Any attempt to contend with a World View by material
force will fail in the end, unless the struggle takes the
form of an attack on behalf of a new spiritual outlook. Only
in the struggle of two World Views can the weapon of brute
force, persistently and ruthlessly employed, bring about a
decision favourable to the party it supports." Philosophical
ideas are not sufficient. The common man does not live by
philosophy but by faith. "Faith," he said, "is harder to
shake than reason."
=Hitler's Promises=
Thus Hitler himself bears witness to the fact that he is
engaged in a conflict of religions. How much he really
believes in the doctrines of blood and soil it would be hard
to say. What is certain is that he correctly gauged the
situation, when he saw the necessity of providing some kind
of religious, philosophical, mystical spell to rally the dim
multitudes to his political purposes. From the first he had
recognised that he must get control of the Churches, because
they represented a spiritual force that would otherwise
challenge his supreme mastery of the minds of men. Since he
did not wish to arouse unnecessary antagonism in the early
stages he had to conceal his ultimate aims until his power
was thoroughly established. He would need the support of
members of the Churches and of that larger number of Germans
that respected, even if they did not practise, the Christian
religion.
Hitler therefore in _Mein Kampf_ took up the position that
a political leader should not confuse his task with that of
the religious reformer. Any other position would, he said,
lead to catastrophe in Germany. Thus, when he first came
into power, he made a bid for Christian support by his
ferocious denunciations of "Godless Bolshevism" and by a
vague, but specious, promise to uphold the Churches. In his
speech to the Reichstag on March 23, 1933, Hitler said, "The
National Government sees in the two Christian confessions
most vital factors in the survival of our nationality. Their
rights will not be touched. The National Government will
accord and secure to the Christian Confessions the influence
that is due to them in schools and education." This piece of
propaganda was highly successful. There was much in the
current Nazi teaching to raise doubts. This declaration
lulled to sleep many who were only too anxious to accept the
new saviour. One of the first acts of the new regime was
designed still further to allay any fear of a conflict
between National Socialism and Christianity. On July 20,
1933, a Concordat between the German Government and the
Vatican was signed at Rome by Cardinal Pacelli and Franz von
Papen. By this striking act Hitler wished to appear in the
light of a more effective supporter of Christian traditions
than the Weimar Government had been.
=German or Christian=
But there can be no doubt about Hitler's own personal
attitude. It has been made clear by two separate witnesses
who have had first-hand opportunities of knowing his mind.
They are both men who have been disappointed in Hitler, but
for entirely opposite reasons. For Kurt Luedecke (_I Knew
Hitler_, p. 465) Hitler is a traitor to the true radicalism
of National Socialism. Dr. Hermann Rauschning, on the other
hand, is a conservative, who abandoned Hitler because he was
alarmed at the anarchical nihilism which he believes to be
its inner essence. Luedecke reports that Hitler said "with
passionate energy", "Of course, I, myself, am a heathen to
the core". In Dr. Rauschning's hearing Hitler said (_Hitler
Speaks_, p. 57), "One is either a German or a Christian.
You cannot be both." Hitler shrewdly recognises that even a
Unitarian view of Jesus Christ is dangerous, because it
implies a belief in immortality. "We don't want people who
keep one eye on the life in the hereafter. We need free men
who feel and know that God is in themselves."
Both writers also agree that Hitler avoided an open attack
upon the Churches, not only because he did not wish to
become involved in complications, but also because he was
convinced that the Churches had lost all life and would
wither away when the mass enthusiasm of the new fanatical
nationalism got into the saddle. The young would be captured
by the dynamic appeal to believe only in themselves, in
Germany and above all in the Leader, and to secure by this
means a domination, first of their own people, and then of
the whole world. Hitler's method for dealing with possible
opponents, whether it be in the national or in the
international sphere, is the same. He aims at the formation
of sympathetic groups, at undermining resistance by a
mixture of promises, flattery, blackmail and terror. It is
characteristic of his mentality that he believes there are
few men who cannot be won over by the hope of reward or the
fear of pain.
The Nazi attack on the Protestant Church in Germany provided
a perfect example of that method of disintegration from
within, which Hitler has since practised with such success
in other fields.
=The Nazi Faith=
The fundamental tenet of the Nazi faith is the sacredness of
the German race, which, though called by God to rule the
world, is attacked and hemmed in by the powers of evil,
incarnate in the Jews, and in a whole group of grasping,
jealous powers who combined in diabolic international
systems for the sole purpose of defeating the Divine
purpose. Like St. George, he, Hitler, has been raised up to
deliver the Chosen People from these foul adversaries. This
is what the Swastika stands for. This is the religion of the
Crooked Cross. We have compared it to Mohammedanism. Like
Mohammedanism it is very largely borrowed from the Bible. It
is a fantastic imitation of Judaism, with the God of
Holiness and Love left out. An illuminating statement of
this German Faith is to be found in a Kiel High School paper
published in 1935:--
"We believe that God has revealed Himself to us in our
German blood and German consciousness, in our German home
and German history. That is our German Faith. We regard the
word 'heathen' as an honourable term, not as a reproach. We
are proud of our German Faith, our Northern Heathenism.
"We cannot take our religious faith from the Jews any more.
We recognise no international religion of humanity because
People and Races are different. Therefore we German Heathen
want no more Jewish foreign religion in Germany. We do not
believe in the Holy Ghost any more. We believe in the Holy
Blood.
"The foundation of the Jewish-Christian teaching is the
dogma of Original Sin. The foundation of our heathen feeling
for life is a belief in the value of healthy Blood.
"Whoever has thoroughly grasped the thought of Race must
reject the Jewish foreign religion in every form, Catholic
or Evangelical, German Church or German Christian.
"We believe in God, the inscrutable, mysterious power of
Fate, which we experience in Blood and Consciousness, Home
and Universe."
So far as the Protestant Church was concerned, Hitler
thought that he would have an easy task. His upbringing
under Roman Catholic auspices left him deeply imbued with
two ideas. Though he hated the Roman Catholic Church and
thought its days were numbered, he retained a profound
respect for the secular grandeur of an institution which had
lasted two thousand years. He felt he had something to learn
from its astuteness, its knowledge of human nature, its
political sense. At the same time he shared the contempt for
Protestantism to be found among the more unthinking of Roman
Catholics. He attributed Bismarck's failure in the
_Kulturkampf_ of the '70s to the fact that, as a
Protestant, he did not understand a real Church. Just
because the Protestants did not know what a Church was they
would soon submit to pressure. The Protestant parsons would
cause no difficulty. "They are insignificant people,
submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when
you talk to them. They have neither a religion that can be
taken seriously nor a great position to defend like Rome.
They will betray anything for the sake of their little jobs
and incomes."
Hitler relied on the disintegration wrought in the
Protestant Church by the absorption of sceptical and
critical ideas during the last half century. "Do you think,"
Dr. Rauschning heard him say, "these liberal priests, who
have no longer a belief, only an office, will refuse to
preach our God in their Churches? I can guarantee that, just
as they have made Haeckel and Darwin, Goethe and Stefan
Georg the prophets of their Christianity, so they will
replace the Cross with our Swastika."
="German Christians"=
One of the first tasks of the Nazis, after their seizure of
power, was to find some means of grafting the Swastika on to
the Evangelical Church. Hitler was astute enough to see that
this must be done from within. He elaborately dissociated
himself from the affair. "I am a Catholic," he said, when I
asked him in July, 1933, whether he wished to form a State
Church, "I have no position in the Protestant Church." All
he was doing was to protect it (as rulers had always done)
from falling into chaos. The truth, of course, was that the
only element making for chaos was the violent minority which
was endeavouring to "nazify" the Evangelical Church.
The declared aim of this minority, who called themselves
"German Christians", was a united Church, a People's Church
and a Church racially German, a Church founded on blood and
soil, a Church that rejected altogether the idea of a
Christian world citizenship.
The demand for a united Church was part of the general Nazi
scheme for bringing every activity of German life under the
complete control of the Party, a process called by the
ambiguous name "co-ordination" (_Gleichschaltung_). Since
the one Party State itself was the submissive servant of the
small group of adventurers who led it, the one Party State
meant a State in which Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler and
Hess would have at their mercy the life and liberty of every
citizen of the country. They are men without morals and
without mercy.
Since their character was well-known amongst educated people
in Germany, the demand for a united Church had to be
narrowly examined by those responsible for the Church. The
argument in favour of a united Protestant Church was from
one point of view difficult to resist. For more than a
century the German people had been striving to gather into
one the congeries of kingdoms, duchies and principates which
was the legacy of the Holy Roman Empire of the German
People. Bismarck's Empire of blood and iron had been able to
achieve a federation. The post-War changes had swept away
the kings and princes, but in many ways the particularist
spirit remained. Of this particularist spirit one of the
most evident remaining signs were the twenty-eight separate
Churches (_Landeskirchen_) which still existed. Moreover
German Protestants were divided into Lutherans and
Calvinists. The move for unity excited wide sympathy. The
question was, How was that unity to be obtained and to be
maintained? The proper Church answer was, By voluntary
action and by consent.
=Reichsbishop=
But this was not at all to the mind of the German
Christians. Their object in pressing so hard for a unified
Church was to make it easier to imbue the whole body with
Nazi principles, to impose upon it the _Führerprinzip_, and
so to make the Church an instrument for the promotion of
Hitler's ambitions for Germany. They demanded a
Reichsbishop. At this point there emerged a Pastor Ludwig
Mueller, a naval chaplain, unknown to fame, but in the
confidence of Hitler.
The constitutional representatives of the Evangelical Church
were Dr. Kapler, Dr. Marahrens, Bishop of Hanover, and Dr.
Hesse, a Calvinist from Elberfeld. With Pastor Mueller, they
drew up a constitution for the united Church which accepted
the office of Reichsbishop. What the Church leaders refused
to do was to choose Mueller as the first Reichsbishop. They
put forward Pastor von Bodelschwingh, a man of deep piety
and wide pastoral experience. Their choice was confirmed by
the Churches. The fury of the "German Christians" knew no
bounds. As a result of their agitation Hitler intervened,
though keeping himself in the background. On his
instructions a lawyer, Dr. Jaeger, was appointed State
Commissar with plenary power for the Church of Prussia, much
the largest of the German Protestant Churches.
Such action was wholly illegal. When Jaeger first attempted
to put the Church under police supervision and dismissed
pastors without trial a violent opposition was created. In
order to silence it a synod was elected in which a "German
Christian" majority was obtained by Nazi party propaganda,
assisted by Hitler himself. Mueller's appointment was
afterwards confirmed, when this Synod met at Wittenberg in
September. The whole procedure is characteristic of Hitler's
methods. He has always attempted to cover his most arbitrary
acts by a cloak of constitutional procedure, in order to
satisfy the orderly instinct so deep in the German mind.
=The Confessional Movement=
The elaborate sham by which the Reichsbishop was imposed on
the Evangelical Church only deceived those who wished to be
deceived. There were many pastors who, in no way accepting
the Nazi ideology, were yet swept off their feet by the
national resurgence. But, by this time, a group of pastors
had been formed, determined to uphold the purity of the
Gospel and the spiritual independence of the Church. Hitler,
whose knowledge of religious matters was of the most
superficial, had made a bad mistake when he relied on the
old Lutheran spirit of subservience to the State and the
debilitating effects of "liberalism" in theology to make
easy his task of bringing the Protestant Churches into line.
Great changes had been wrought in the world of Protestant
theology. The War had revealed the weakness of a religion
that was mere moralism. Sincere Christians had been thrown
back on the Living God, the God of the Bible; criticism had
done a useful work in bringing to the front the apocalyptic
element in the New Testament; and, not least important, the
separation of the Church from the State introduced by the
Weimar Republic had taught the younger generation of
Protestant pastors to rely on the inherent spiritual power
of the Church itself, now that the Prince, the Summus
Episcopus, had been withdrawn.
It thus happened--most providentially--that, when the
challenge of the Nazi dogmas burst upon the Church, they
were confronted within the Evangelical Church itself by a
powerful group, prepared to take their stand with equal
determination on the unchanging dogmas of the Christian
Church, contained in the historic Confessions of Faith.
Their insistence on the Confessions of Faith led to the
opposition becoming known as "the Confessionals". The
controversy raged round two points, the nature and
constitution of the Church and the Christian doctrine of
man. To the claim of the secular power to impose a spiritual
dictator in the person of the Reichsbishop they opposed the
spiritual independence of the Church and its right to
fashion its own government. The government of the Church,
they maintained, is not a mere matter of convenience, but
part of its spiritual essence. They also rejected the
attempt to limit Church offices to those of "Aryan" stock;
the doctrines of blood and soil were in flat contradiction
to the universality of the Christian revelation and to the
redemption offered to men of every race through the Blood of
Jesus Christ. The Reichsbishop promulgated--on his own
authority--a "muzzling order" forbidding pastors to
introduce into their sermons any matter of Church
controversy or to write books or pamphlets thereon, under
pain of suspension from their office and the loss of
one-third of their income.
The so-called law was categorically rejected by four
thousand Confessional pastors who had formed themselves into
an Emergency League (_Notbund_). The Confessional Front
contained within itself different groups or tendencies.
There were the younger pastors, men like Martin Niemöller,
who had come under the influence of the revival of a
positive Christianity. Many of them were Calvinists, but
many were Lutherans; all owed something to the fearless
proclamation of the supremacy of God by the Swiss prophet,
Karl Barth. At the other end of the Front, so to speak, was
the more conservative wing represented by the Lutheran
bishops of Hanover, Bavaria and Württemberg, Dr. Marahrens,
Dr. Meiser and Dr. Wurm. The more definite Confessionals
were for the most to be found in the largest of the
provincial Churches, that of Prussia, the constitutional
organisation of which had been destroyed by Reichsbishop
Mueller. The other bishops had contrived to preserve their
Churches intact, and they were all strong Lutherans. For
both these reasons they were more inclined to attempt a
_modus vivendi_ with the State.
=A Drastic Step=
For months the controversy swayed from side to side.
Sometimes the Reichsbishop seemed to be willing to reach a
reasonable solution. But whenever he did so, something
always upset the arrangements. And there is no doubt that
leading forces in the Nazi Party were furtively at work,
using the "German Christians" as an instrument to prevent
anything that would promote an independent Church,
uncontrolled by Nazi ideology. This pressure, exercised
through the official Church Government only, had the effect
of welding more closely the Confessional Forces. At Barmen
in May, 1934, they held a great Synod at which the whole
German Evangelical Church was represented, Lutherans,
Reformed and United. It declared that Mueller's Church
Government had forfeited any claim to be the constitutional
government of the Church, because it had betrayed the
principles of the Gospel, and had attempted to subordinate
the Word of God to secular powers who were claiming to be
the instruments of a new revelation. The Synod took a
drastic step; it drew up plans for the creation of a new and
true Church government, and appointed a Council of Brethren
to be the nucleus of such a government. By this action what
had been the Confessional Movement became the Confessional
Church.
The Reichsbishop counter-attacked in the Autumn by holding a
so-called National Synod which included only reliable Nazis.
The chief act of the Synod was the promulgation of an oath
requiring every minister to swear to be true and obedient to
the leader of the German People and State, Adolf Hitler, and
to accept conscientiously all the orders of Mueller's Church
Government. Mueller's next step was to issue decrees
bringing the independent Churches of Württemberg under his
control. Bishop Wurm and Bishop Meiser both protested
vigorously and were placed under arrest in their own houses.
This action caused strong public protests both in
Württemberg and Bavaria, and only served to show how popular
the bishops were with their flocks. Dr. Jaeger, the lawyer
who was the real power behind the Reichsbishop, thereupon
removed Bishop Meiser from his office. With every fresh
aggression on the part of the Church Ministry the popularity
of the two redoubtable bishops increased by leaps and
bounds. A mass demonstration of ten thousand people gathered
on the Adolf Hitler Platz at Nuremberg to support Dr.
Meiser. Their case was taken up throughout Germany.
The Reich Confessional Synod met in October at Dahlem, where
Pastor Niemöller's parish was, and drew up a statement
demanding that the Reich Government should cease to
interfere with the Church. The combination of this firm
action with the popular enthusiasm in South Germany, and the
fact that important German Christians began to go over to
the Confessional side had a remarkable effect. Dr. Jaeger
was forced to resign, while the Reichsbishop retired into
the background. Though he kept his title and his stipend, he
ceased to be of any importance. Thus the first round of the
conflict between the Party and the Church, in which the
Nazis attempted to disintegrate the Church from within,
ended with a defeat. The Evangelical Church had shown that
it had an unexpected spiritual power.
=The Old Gods=
The set-back encouraged the Confessionals to take a bolder
line, but it also made the Nazis more determined to get the
Church under control. The Provisional Church Government
published a careful statement on February 21, 1935, warning
the members of the Church against the new heathenism which
had appeared with the declared object of fashioning a new
type of man. In it the orthodox Protestant leaders--who
understood very clearly where they stood and what it was
that threatened them--set forth with precision the religion
which the Nazis are promoting as a substitute for
Christianity. The unbridgeable gulf between the Cross and
the Crooked Cross stands out starkly.
In this new religion they said the old German gods
reappeared--with a difference! Odin was now regarded as the
symbol of those primitive forces of the soul of the Nordic
man which still lived as he had done five thousand years
ago. As the Eternal Wanderer he is the symbol of the Nordic
soul ever seeking and pushing forward. In this new religion
the relations between God and man are turned upside down.
Man creates God in his image. He says, "If I did not exist,
God would not exist." "The God whom we honour, would not
exist, if our soul and blood did not exist." "I am the
origin of myself in my eternal and my temporal life." "The
Christian Churches are a monstrous travesty of the simple
and glad message that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us."
As a consequence the Old Testament must be discarded as a
book of religion, and whatever in the New does not fit in
with this Nordic faith. There must be no more sermons about
the Lamb of God.
As the Confessional leaders pointed out, such a religion
radically rejected the notion that the Bible contained a
Divine Revelation and substituted for it the Voice of the
Divine in the Blood, in the vitality of the Race, in the
rhythm of nature and the evolution of history. Thus the God
in which it believed was not personal but pantheist,
naturalistic and ultimately atheist. Since faith was derived
from the Blood, everything racially foreign must be removed
from religion. Consequently Paul could only be regarded as a
corrupter of the "pure Jesus teaching", and a mere Jewish
rabbi. The only sin known to the new religion is a sin
against "the Blood". The need for divine Grace is removed,
and the Cross becomes the sign not of victory but of
collapse. The principle of honour must replace the Christian
idea of love, which is but another name for a weak
humanitarianism.
The Confessional leaders pointed out, with quiet irony, that
this body of ideas was merely a development (though a very
perverse one) of those "liberal" and Freemason conceptions
which the Nazis professed to find so loathsome. They called
upon their people to choose whether they would revere the
God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ or this other God.
They could not do both. The memorandum also appealed to the
Government for perfect freedom to uphold this faith and to
controvert those errors, which were flooding the Press, the
theatre and even the schools, with Government
encouragements.
This bold challenge was a clarion call. Seven hundred
pastors who read the manifesto were either arrested or put
under house arrest and five thousand more were warned by the
Secret Police not to read it. It was thus made clear that
the new heathenism was the official religion of the Third
Reich. In order to press this point home a new law was
promulgated, transferring all Church disputes from the
courts of justice to a bureau of the Ministry of Interior.
=The State Demands=
The struggle between the Evangelical Church and the Nazi
regime entered on a new phase in July, 1935. The office of
Reich Minister for Church Affairs was created, and a Herr
Kerrl, a lawyer from the Prussian Ministry of Justice, only
in the loosest sense a Churchman, was made the first
minister. Henceforward it was plain that the Government
intended to assume control over the Church. Kerrl had not
been long in office before he issued a decree which
established this control in the most complete manner. "The
Reich Minister for Church Affairs is empowered, for the
restoration of orderly conditions in the German Evangelical
Church and the Regional Evangelical Churches, to issue
ordinances with binding legal force."
Herr Kerrl's dictatorship was marked by a continuance of the
methods which had been used by the Reichsbishop, the methods
of profuse expressions of good will, accompanied by threats
and diversified by violent and illegal action, which are
characteristic of the Nazi mind. At first Kerrl let some of
the pastors out of prison. (It is important to bear in mind
that from 1934 onwards there never was a time when there
were not pastors in prison without any attempt at legal
trial.) His new plan for restoring order to the harassed
Evangelical Church turned out to be a series of committees
for the different regional Churches at the head of which was
placed a Reich Committee. A much respected Churchman, Dr.
Zoellner, was appointed chairman of the Reich committee.
A new gleam of hope seemed to appear and many of the
moderate Confessionals showed themselves ready to co-operate
for the sake of peace. The more far-sighted, known as the
Dahlem group, of whom Pastor Niemöller was the leader, were
doubtful from the first. They were suspicious of
organisations which ultimately had no Church authority, but
only that of the State, and they refused to serve on them.
On the other hand the committees that were formed in
Württemberg and Bavaria were wholly Confessional, because
"German Christians" were a negligible factor in these
Churches: and these committees strongly criticised Dr.
Zoellner, because the first appeal had not only affirmed the
Confessional basis of the Church but "the National Socialist
development of the people on the basis of Race, Blood and
Soil". This was as good as saying that no one could be a
Churchman who did not also accept the Nazi ideology.
Dr. Zoellner, whose good faith nobody questioned, was soon
in difficulties with the committees. But it was not the
Confessionals who caused him trouble. In a number of
provincial Churches "German Christian" bishops had been
appointed during the Mueller-Jaeger regime even though they
represented only a small minority of the pastors and
parishes. The committees wished them to resign as a first
step to appeasement. This a number of them absolutely
refused to do. After an interview with Herr Hitler, Kerrl
strongly supported them in their refusal, thus revealing
again the covert influence of the Führer behind the scenes.
It was not long before Herr Kerrl instituted sharper attacks
on the Confessional Church. The first step was the
confiscation of the trustee funds of the Church by the
secret police; the next was an order requiring all writings
multigraphed for distribution to be submitted to censorship
before being sent out. Printing had been forbidden for a
considerable time. But the Confessionals had created a very
thorough and ingenious system for keeping in touch with
their members by the use of typescript and manifolding.
Kerrl next proceeded to deny to all Church associations or
groups the right to exercise executive or administrative
functions, such as the appointment of pastors, the
examination and ordination of theological candidates, making
collections, or holding synods. The meaning of these orders
was plain: they were designed to paralyse the "Provisional
Church Government" (_Vorläufige Leitung_). The Confessional
Church refused to pay any attention to what they regarded as
entirely illegal action.
A new and more vigorous Provisional Church Administration
was formed in the spring of 1936 which included Pastor
Niemöller, Dr. Boehm and Pastor Albertz.
The new Provisional Church Government very soon took a bold
and determined initiative to test the real mind of the Nazi
Government. In all that had happened so far, as has been
pointed out, the Führer kept well in the background. The
Confessional leaders had to meet the criticism that they
were unduly suspicious of Kerrl, whose intentions were, it
was asserted, really benevolent. There was only one way in
which the whole situation could be cleared up, and that was
to appeal directly to Hitler himself.
=Questions to the Führer=
Pastor Niemöller and his colleagues in the Provisional
Church Administration understood that secrecy was essential.
If they tried to put the Führer in the dock publicly, their
object would not be achieved. Ways were found therefore to
despatch to Hitler a memorandum which asked him searching
questions. Had the attempt to dechristianise the German
people, which was being so vigorously pursued, the
co-operation of responsible statesman, or was it merely
permitted? Were Goebbels and Rosenberg authorised to
interpret "Positive Christianity" in a way that deprived it
of all meaning? Were the attacks of party officials on the
Christian Faith authorised by the Government? Why was the
Church not allowed freely and publicly to answer these
attacks?
The Confessional Pastors have often been slightingly spoken
of, and not only in Germany--because, as it was said, they
were only interested in parsons' problems and not in broad
human questions. The memorandum to Hitler disposes of that
charge. Not content with pleading for freedom to uphold
their religious faith, they boldly criticised the regime in
two fundamental respects. The Evangelical Christian, they
said, was gravely injured in his loyalty by the existence of
concentration camps in a State claiming to be founded on
law, and by the power given to the Secret Police to take
action against individuals without any process of law. They
also asked Hitler directly whether he wished to accept the
semi-divine position of a kind of mediator between God and
the Peoples, which was freely accorded to him in certain
quarters. The memorandum became public property, probably by
Nazi action, and no reply ever came from Hitler. But the
conflict was much accentuated. Many Germans who had very
little idea of the acuteness of the struggle had it brought
home to them, and pressure on the Church increased. Baldur
von Schirach intensified his efforts to obtain complete
control of the youth of Germany. Herr Rust, the Minister of
Education, closed the Theological School at Elberfeld. The
Church Committees were in the final stages of collapse. Dr.
Zoellner and the Reich Church Committee resigned on February
12, 1937, on the ground that Kerrl made their task
impossible by constant interference whenever--in the
interest of order--they found it necessary to take action
against "German Christians". Kerrl replied in a speech which
made the situation perfectly plain. "There has now arisen a
new authority concerning what Christ and Christianity really
is. This new authority is Adolf Hitler."
=Pastor Niemöller=
The failure of the Church committees showed that there was
no hope of reducing the Evangelical Church to the control of
the Party by any method that pretended, with whatever
camouflage, to have a Church character. More direct action
was needed. The only way was to attack the parsons in their
persons and their property. The latter Kerrl instituted by
setting up Finance Departments which could regulate the
terms of service of all Church officials. This was followed
by a wave of arrests. Some five hundred pastors found
themselves in a prison cell for longer or shorter periods.
At last, on July 1, 1937, the Party stretched out its hand
to seize the man for whom Hitler had the bitterest, quite
personal, hatred, Martin Niemöller. It was not till the
following February that he was brought to trial. The former
submarine officer, who became a pastor after the World War,
had struck the imagination of the world by the courage, the
simplicity, the forthrightness of his defence of the freedom
of religion in Germany, an impression all the stronger
because it was known that he was an ardent patriot who had
even voted National Socialist, and, as late as 1933, had
preached a sermon applauding the national resurgence. He now
stood before a judge charged with abuse of the pulpit for
political purposes in accordance with an old law that
Bismarck (grim irony) had concocted as a weapon against the
Roman Catholics in his unsuccessful _Kulturkampf_. It was a
tribute to the persistence of the concept of justice, even
under the Nazi regime, that the Special Court passed a
sentence which would have allowed him to go free. No less
clear a proof of the fact that in the Nazi State justice in
the end is merely Hitler's will, was afforded by the seizure
of Niemöller by the Gestapo as he was about to leave the
court and his re-incarceration in a concentration camp where
he has languished ever since. Though he has not suffered the
physical barbarities meted out to some other pastors, only a
stout heart and a profound faith could have sustained for so
long a man by nature boundlessly active and energetic.
In his last sermon he had said, "We have no more thought of
using our own power to escape the arm of the authorities
than had the Apostles of old. No more are we ready to keep
silence at man's behest when God commands us to speak. For
it is, and must remain the case, that we must obey God
rather than man".
This was the spirit that animated all the Confessional
pastors, whose names are less known to fame. As the months
wore on during 1938 and the early part of 1939 and the
preparations for war became more and more intense in
Germany, the pressure on all independent thought in the
Evangelical Church increased. Attempts were made by Kerrl
acting as the Government of the Church to impose on pastors
a new oath of personal loyalty to the Führer; the leadership
of the Confessional Church was paralysed by orders
forbidding them to meet; and a law was promulgated by Dr.
Werner in April, 1939, enabling the president of any
provincial Church to remove any pastor from one parish to
another and to allow German Christian minorities to set up a
pastor in any parish where the lawful pastor was not
sufficiently Nazi. In July a regulation was issued by Dr.
Werner for the spiritual guidance of the provincial Churches
which made the Nazi _Weltanschauung_ obligatory for all
members of the Evangelical Church. For Germans, he said,
Christianity can only be understood within the boundaries of
people and race.
Despite enormous difficulties, many of the Confessional
pastors went on with their spiritual work wherever possible,
undeflected, though the organisation of the Confessional
Church had practically become non-existent.
=The Church in War=
Since the shadow of war has enveloped the German people few
details that throw any light on the Church conflict can be
descried. A tendency to concentrate on the national struggle
manifested itself. The constraints of war, both in the
spiritual and in the material sphere, have caused the
cessation of all opposition to the regime for the time
being. This is intelligible. What the future holds no man
can say. It is difficult to believe that the frightful loss
and suffering imposed on the German people in a totally
unnecessary war will not in some way produce a reaction
against the Crooked Cross. Is it too much to hope that, when
that day comes, those who have been faithful to the Cross of
Christ and suffered so much, will have a message that may
gradually receive a wider hearing from a disillusioned
people, nauseated by a propaganda that has wrought so much
injury to their bodies and their souls?
=The New Paganism=
The epic story, here too slightly sketched, suggests certain
reflections on the place of religion in human society. The
new paganism invented by Hitler and his associates, like the
Bolshevism of Stalin, demonstrates at once the necessity for
a mystical element in political movements, and the grave
dangers that are attached to it. The worship of the
Messianic Führer, the belief in the racial election of the
Germans, the laudation of force as an instrument of the
Divine action, are all parts of the technique for attaining
and retaining power. This religion must be swept away if the
concentration of power inevitable in modern society is to be
made fruitful for, and not destructive of, human happiness.
But this can only be done, if the false mysticism be
replaced by a true faith, by one that recognises the
existence of a Supreme Moral Law of universal validity as
the determining factor in the universe. To fall back on mere
utility will fail once again to provide the necessary basis
for human co-operation.
The Crooked Cross, in its perversity, has some light to
throw on the meaning of freedom. It is not without
significance that, when the Party, of which it is the
symbol, triumphed over academic, industrial and political
freedom, there remained one liberty that it could not
subdue, the liberty to believe in that which is above all
human systems.
In Volume III of the _Cambridge Modern History_ that acute
thinker, Neville Figgis, draws the following conclusions
from his survey of political thought in the sixteenth
century: "Religious liberty is rightly described as the
parent of political." The idea of sovereignty is the first
need for the true conception of the State. But it is no less
necessary to realise its limitations. "Religious liberty
arose, not because the sects believed in it, but out of
their passionate determination not to be extinguished,
either by political or religious persecution." When to-day
the totalitarian State threatens more frightful tyrannies
than any in the past, religious faith has an essential part
to play in the maintenance of freedom.
PRINTED BY PURNELL AND SONS, LTD.,
PAULTON (SOMERSET) AND LONDON
MACMILLAN WAR PAMPHLETS
1. LET THERE BE LIBERTY
A. P. HERBERT
2. WAR WITH HONOUR
A. A. MILNE
3. NORDIC TWILIGHT
E. M. FORSTER
4. THE CROOKED CROSS
THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER
5. NAZI AND NAZARENE
RONALD KNOX
6. WHEN I REMEMBER
J. R. CLYNE
7. FOR CIVILIZATION
C. E. M. JOAD
8. THE RIGHTS OF MAN
HAROLD J. LASKI
[End of _The Crooked Cross_ by A. S. Duncan-Jones]